Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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dispute as to the precise amount of the influence they exercised, andthe exact nature of the rites and customs they established.

A belief in the early connexion between the Egyptians and Athenians,encouraged by the artful vanity of the one, was welcomed by the livelycredulity of the other. Many ages after the reputed sway of themythical Cecrops, it was fondly imagined that traces of their originfrom the solemn Egypt [70] were yet visible among the graceful andversatile people, whose character was as various, yet asindividualized, as their religion--who, viewed in whatsoever aspect oftheir intellectual history, may appear constantly differing, yetremain invariably Athenian. Whether clamouring in the Agora--whetherloitering in the Academe--whether sacrificing to Hercules in thetemple--whether laughing at Hercules on the stage--whether withMiltiades arming against the Mede--whether with Demosthenes declaimingagainst the Macedonian--still unmistakeable, unexampled, original, andalone--in their strength or their weakness, their wisdom or theirfoibles their turbulent action, their cultivated repose.

CHAPTER II.

The unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission thatCecrops might be Egyptian.--Attic Kings before Theseus.--TheHellenes.--Their Genealogy.--Ionians and Achaeans Pelasgic.--Contrastbetween Dorians and Ionians.--Amphictyonic League.

I. In allowing that there does not appear sufficient evidence toinduce us to reject the tale of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops, itwill be already observed, that I attach no great importance to thedispute: and I am not inclined reverently to regard the innumerabletheories that have been built on so uncertain a foundation. AnEgyptian may have migrated to Attica, but Egyptian influence in Atticawas faint and evanescent;--arrived at the first dawn of historicalfact, it is with difficulty that we discover the most dubious andshadowy vestiges of its existence. Neither Cecrops nor any otherEgyptian in those ages is recorded to have founded a dynasty inAttica--it is clear that none established a different language--andall the boasted analogies of religion fade, on a close examination,into an occasional resemblance between the symbols and attributes ofEgyptian and Grecian deities, or a similarity in mystic ceremonies andsolemn institutions, which, for the most part, was almost indisputablyformed by intercourse between Greece and Egypt in a far later age.Taking the earliest epoch at which history opens, and comparing thewhole character of the Athenian people--moral, social, religious, andpolitical--with that of any Egyptian population, it is not possible toselect a more startling contrast, or one in which national characterseems more indelibly formed by the early and habitual adoption ofutterly opposite principles of thought and action. [71]

I said that Cecrops founded no dynasty: the same traditions that bringhim from Egypt give him Cranaus, a native, for his successor. Thedarkness of fable closes over the interval between the reign ofCranaus and the time of Theseus: if tradition be any guide whatsoever,the history of that period was the history of the human race--it wasthe gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn ofcivilization--and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautifulfictions round every landmark in their slow and encumbered progress.

It would he very possible, by a little ingenious application of thevarious fables transmitted to us, to construct a history of imaginedconquests and invented revolutions; and thus to win the unmeritedpraise of throwing a new light upon those remote ages. But when fableis our only basis--no fabric we erect, however imposing in itself, canbe rightly entitled to the name of history. And, as in certainancient chronicles it is recorded merely of undistinguished monarchsthat they "lived and died," so such an assertion is precisely thatwhich it would be the most presumptuous to make respecting the shadowykings who, whether in Eusebius or the Parian marble, give dates andchronicles to the legendary gloom which preceded the heroic age.

The principal event recorded in these early times, for which thereseems some foundation, is a war between Erechtheus of Athens and theEleusinians;--the last assisted or headed by the Thracian Eumolpus.Erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest. But atreaty afterward concluded with the Eleusinians confirmed theascendency of Athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laidthe foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries. In this contest isintroduced a very doubtful personage, under the appellation of Ion (towhom I shall afterward recur), who appears on the side of theAthenians, and who may be allowed to have exercised a certaininfluence over them, whether in religious rites or politicalinstitutions, though he neither attained to the throne, nor seems tohave exceeded the peaceful authority of an ally. Upon the dim andconfused traditions relative to Ion, the wildest and most luxuriantspeculations have been grafted--prolix to notice, unnecessary tocontradict.

II. During this period there occurred--not rapidly, but slowly--themost important revolution of early Greece, viz., the spread of thattribe termed the Hellenes, who gradually established theirpredominance throughout the land, impressed indelible traces on thenational character, and finally converted their own into the nationalname.

I have already expressed my belief that the Pelasgi were not abarbarous race, speaking a barbarous tongue, but that they were akinto the Hellenes, who spoke the Grecian language, and are consideredthe proper Grecian family. Even the dubious record of genealogy(which, if fabulous in itself, often under the names of individualstypifies the affinity of tribes) makes the Hellenes kindred to thePelasgi. Deucalion, the founder of the Hellenes, was of Pelasgicorigin--son of Prometheus, and nephew of Atlas, king of the PelasgicArcadia.

However this may be, we find the Hellenes driven from Phocis, theirearliest recorded seat, by a flood in the time of Deucalion.Migrating into Thessaly, they expelled the Pelasgi; and afterwardspreading themselves through Greece, they attained a generalascendency over the earlier habitants, enslaving, doubtless, the bulkof the population among which they formed a settlement, but ejectingnumbers of the more resolute or the more noble families, and causingthose celebrated migrations by which the Pelasgi carried their nameand arts into Italy, as well as into Crete and various other isles.On the continent of Greece, when the revolution became complete, thePelasgi appear to have retained only Arcadia, the greater part ofThessaly [72], the land of Dodona, and Attica.

There is no reason to suppose the Hellenes more enlightened andcivilized than the Pelasgi; but they seem, if only by the record oftheir conquests, to have been a more stern, warlike, and adventurousbranch of the Grecian family. I conclude them, in fact, to have beenthat part of the Pelasgic race who the longest retained the fierce andvigorous character of a mountain tribe, and who found the nations theyinvaded in that imperfect period of civilization which is sofavourable to the designs of a conqueror--when the first warlikenature of a predatory tribe is indeed abandoned--but before thediscipline, order, and providence of a social community are acquired.Like the Saxons into Britain, the Hellenes were invited [73] by thedifferent Pelasgic chiefs as auxiliaries, and remained as conquerors.But in other respects they rather resembled the more knightly andenergetic race by whom in Britain the Saxon dynasty was overturned:--the Hellenes were the Normans of antiquity. It is impossible todecide the exact date when the Hellenes obtained the generalascendency or when the Greeks received from that Thessalian tribetheir common appellation. The Greeks were not termed Hellenes in thetime in which the Iliad was composed--they were so termed in the timeof Hesiod. But even in the Iliad, the word Panhellenes, applied tothe Greeks, testifies the progress of the revolution [74], and in theOdyssey, the Hellenic name is no longer limited to the dominion ofAchilles.

III. The Hellenic nation became popularly subdivided into fourprincipal families, viz., the Dorians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, andAchaeans, of which I consider the former two alone genuinely Hellenic.The fable which makes Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus, the sons of Helen,declares that while Dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands,Aeolus succeeded to the domain of Phthiotis, and records no conquestsof his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of theprincipal families of Greece. If rightly construed, this accountwould denote that the Aeolians remained for a generation at leastsubsequent to the first migration of the Dorians, in their Thessalianterritories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended aswarriors and invaders upon the different states of Greece. Theyappear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and thewealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. Theopulence of Orchomenus is compared by Homer to that of EgyptianThebes. And in the time of the Trojan war, Corinth was already termed"the wealthy." By degrees the Aeolians became in a great measureblended and intermingled with the Dorians. Yet so intimatelyconnected are the Hellenes and Pelasgi, that even these, the linealdescendants of Helen through the eldest branch, are no less confoundedwith the Pelasgic than the Dorian race. Strabo and Pausanias alikeaffirm the Aeolians to be Pelasgic, and in the Aeolic dialect weapproach to the Pelasgic tongue.

The Dorians, first appearing in Phthiotis, are found two generationsafterward in the mountainous district of Histiaeotis, comprisingwithin their territory, according to Herodotus, the immemorial Vale ofTempe. Neighboured by warlike hordes, more especially the heroicLapithae, with whom their earliest legends record fierce and continuedwar, this mountain tribe took from nature and from circumstance theirhardy and martial character. Unable to establish secure settlementsin the fertile Thessalian plains, and ranging to the defiles throughwhich the romantic Peneus winds into the sea, several of the tribemigrated early into Crete, where, though forming only a part of thepopulation of the isle, they are supposed by some to have establishedthe Doric constitution and customs, which in their later settlementsserved them for a model. Other migrations marked their progress tothe foot of Mount Pindus; thence to Dryopis, afterward called Doris;and from Dryopis to the Peloponnesus; which celebrated migration,under the name of the "Return of the Heraclidae," I shall hereaftermore especially describe. I have said that genealogy attributes theorigin of the Dorians and that of the Aeolians to Dorus and Aeolus,sons of Helen. This connects them with the Hellenes and with eachother. The adventures of Xuthus, the third son of Helen, are notrecorded by the legends of Thessaly, and he seems merely a fictitiouscreation, invented to bring into affinity with the Hellenes thefamilies, properly Pelasgic, of the Achaeans and Ionians. It is bywriters comparatively recent that we are told that Xuthus was drivenfrom Thessaly by his brothers--that he took refuge in Attica, and onthe plains of Marathon built four towns--Oenoe, Marathon,Probalinthus, and Tricorythus [75], and that he wedded Creusa,daughter of Erechtheus, king of Attica, and that by her he had twosons, Achaeus and Ion. By some we are told that Achaeus, entering theeastern side of Peloponnesus, founded a dominion in Laconia andArgolis; by others, on the contrary, that he conducted a band, partlyAthenian, into Thessaly, and recovered the domains of which his fatherhad been despoiled [76]. Both these accounts of Achaeus, as therepresentative of the Achaeans, are correct in this, that theAchaeans, had two settlements from remote periods--the one in thesouth of Thessaly--the other in the Peloponnesus.

The Achaeans were long the most eminent of the Grecian tribes.Possessed of nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus, except, by asingular chance, that part which afterward bore their name, theyboasted the warlike fame of the opulent Menelaus and the haughtyAgamemnon, the king of men. The dominant tribe of the heroic age, theAchaeans form the kindred link between the several epochs of thePelasgic and Hellenic sway--their character indeed Hellenic, but theirdescent apparently Pelasgic. Dionysius of Halicarnassus derives themfrom Pelasgus himself, and they existed as Achaeans before theHellenic Xuthus was even born. The legend which makes Achaeus thebrother of Ion, tends likewise to prove, that if the Ionians wereoriginally Pelasgic, so also were the Achaeans. Let us then come toIon.

Although Ion is said to have given the name of Ionians to theAtticans, yet long before his time the Iaones were among the ancientinhabitants of the country; and Herodotus (the best authority on thesubject) declares that the Ionians were Pelasgic and indigenous.There is not sufficient reason to suppose, therefore, that they wereHellenic conquerors or Hellenic settlers. They appear, on thecontrary, to have been one of the aboriginal tribes of Attica:--a partof them proceeded into the Peloponnesus (typified under the migrationthither of Xuthus), and these again returning (as typified by thearrival of Ion at Athens), in conjunction with such of theirfraternity as had remained in their native settlement, became the mostpowerful and renowned of the several divisions of the Atticpopulation. Their intercourse with the Peloponnesians would lead theIonians to establish some of the political institutions and religiousrites they had become acquainted with in their migration; and thus maywe most probably account for the introduction of the worship of Apollointo Attica, and for that peaceful political influence which themythical Ion is said to have exercised over his countrymen.

At all events, we cannot trace, any distinct and satisfactoryconnexion between this, the most intellectual and brilliant tribe ofthe Grecian family, and that roving and fortunate Thessalian horde towhich the Hellenes gave the general name, and of which the Dorianswere the fittest representative and the most powerful section. Nor,despite the bold assumptions of Mueller, is there any evidence of aHellenic conquest in Attica. [77]

And that land which, according to tradition and to history, was theearly refuge of exiles, derived from the admission and intercourse ofstrangers and immigrants those social and political improvements whichin other states have been wrought by conquest.

IV. After the Dorians obtained possession of the Peloponnesus, thewhole face of Greece was gradually changed. The return of theHeraclidae was the true consummation of the Hellenic revolution. Thetribes hitherto migratory became fixed in the settlements theyacquired. The Dorians rose to the rank of the most powerful race ofGreece: and the Ionians, their sole rivals, possessed only on thecontinent the narrow soil of Attica, though their colonies covered thefertile coast of Asia Minor. Greece thus reduced to two main tribes,the Doric and the Ionian, historians have justly and generallyconcurred in noticing between them the strongest and most markeddistinctions,--the Dorians grave, inflexible, austere,--the Ionianslively, versatile, prone to change. The very dialect of the one wasmore harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, thedances of the Dorians, bore the impress of their severe simplicity.The sentiment of veneration which pervaded their national charactertaught the Dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegianceto the rites of religion--and a patriarchal respect for age--but, onthe other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutionsmerely on account of their antiquity--and an almost servile regard forbirth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy ofcitizens. We shall see hereafter, that while Athens establishedrepublics, Sparta planted oligarchies. The Dorians were proud ofindependence, but it was the independence of nobles rather than of apeople. Their severity preserved them long from innovation--no lessby what was vicious in its excess than by what was wise in itsprinciple. With many great and heroic qualities, they were yet harshto enemies--cruel to dependants--selfish to allies. Their wholepolicy was to preserve themselves as they were; if they knew not therash excesses, neither were they impelled by the generous emotions,which belong to men whose constant aspirations are to be better and tobe greater;--they did not desire to be better or to be greater; theironly wish was not to be different. They sought in the future nothingbut the continuance of the past; and to that past they boundthemselves with customs and laws of iron. The respect in which theyheld their women, as well as their disdain of pleasure, preserved themin some measure from the licentiousness common to states in whichwomen are despised; but the respect had little of the delicacy andsentiment of individual attachment--attachment was chiefly for theirown sex [78]. The Ionians, on the contrary, were susceptible,flexile, and more characterized by the generosity of modern knighthoodthan the sternness of ancient heroism. Them, not the past, but thefuture, charmed. Ever eager to advance, they were impatient even ofthe good, from desire of the better. Once urged to democracy--democracy fixed their character, as oligarchy fixed the Spartan. For,to change is the ambition of a democracy--to conserve of an oligarchy.The taste, love, and intuition of the beautiful stamped the Greeksabove all nations, and the Ionians above all the Greeks. It was notonly that the Ionians were more inventive than their neighbours, butthat whatever was beautiful in invention they at once seized andappropriated. Restless, inquisitive, ardent, they attempted allthings, and perfected art--searched into all things, and consummatedphilosophy.

The Ionic character existed everywhere among Ionians, but the Doricwas not equally preserved among the Dorians. The reason is evident.The essence of the Ionian character consisted in the spirit of change--that of the Dorian in resistance to innovation. When any Doricstate abandoned its hereditary customs and institutions, it soon lostthe Doric character--became lax, effeminate, luxurious--a corruptionof the character of the Ionians; but no change could assimilate theIonian to the Doric; for they belonged to different eras ofcivilization--the Doric to the elder, the Ionian to the more advanced.The two races of Scotland have become more alike than heretofore; butit is by making the highlander resemble the lowlander--and not byconverting the lowland citizen into the mountain Gael. The habits ofcommerce, the substitution of democratic for oligarchic institutions,were sufficient to alter the whole character of the Dorians. Thevoluptuous Corinth--the trading Aegina (Doric states)--infinitely moreresembled Athens than Sparta.

It is, then, to Sparta, that in the historical times we must lookchiefly for the representative of the Doric tribe, in its proper andelementary features; and there, pure, vigorous, and concentrated, theDoric character presents a perpetual contrast to the Athenian. Thiscontrast continued so long as either nation retained a character toitself;--and (no matter what the pretences of hostility) was the realand inevitable cause of that enmity between Athens and Sparta, theresults of which fixed the destiny of Greece.

Yet were the contests of that enmity less the contests betweenopposing tribes than between those opposing principles which everynation may be said to nurse within itself; viz., the principle tochange, and the principle to preserve; the principle to popularize,and the principle to limit the governing power; here the genius of anoligarchy, there of a people; here adherence to the past, there desireof the future. Each principle produced its excesses, and furnishes asalutary warning. The feuds of Sparta and Athens may be regarded ashistorical allegories, clothing the moral struggles, which, with alltheir perils and all their fluctuations, will last to the end of time.

V. This period is also celebrated for the supposed foundation of thatassembly of the Grecian states, called the Amphictyonic Confederacy.Genealogy attributes its origin to a son of Deucalion, calledAmphictyon. [79]

This fable would intimate a Hellenic origin, since Deucalion is thefabled founder of the Hellenes; but out of twelve tribes whichcomposed the confederacy, only three were Hellenic, and the restPelasgic. But with the increasing influence of the Dorian oracle ofDelphi, with which it was connected, it became gradually considered aHellenic institution. It is not possible to decipher the firstintention of this league. The meeting was held at two places, nearAnthela, in the pass of Thermopylae, and Delphi; at the latter placein the spring, at the former in the autumn. If tradition imputed toAmphictyon the origin of the council, it ascribed to Acrisius, kingof Argos [80], the formation of its proper power and laws. He is saidto have founded one of the assemblies, either that in Delphi orThermopylae (accounts vary), and to have combined the two, increasedthe number of the members, and extended the privileges of the body.We can only interpret this legend by the probable supposition, thatthe date of holding the same assembly at two different places, atdifferent seasons of the year, marks the epoch of some importantconjunction of various tribes, and, it may be, of deities hithertodistinct. It might be an attempt to associate the Hellenes with thePelasgi, in the early and unsettled power of the former race: and thissupposition is rendered the more plausible by the evident union of theworship of the Dorian Apollo at Delphi with that of the PelasgianCeres at Thermopylae [81]. The constitution of the league was this--each city belonging to an Amphictyonic state sent usually twodeputies--the one called Pylagoras, the other Hieromnemon. Thefunctions of the two deputies seem to have differed, and those of thelatter to have related more particularly to whatsoever appertained toreligion. On extraordinary occasions more than one pylagoras wasdeputed--Athens at one time sent no less than three. But the numberof deputies sent did not alter the number of votes in the council.Each city had two votes and no more, no matter how many delegates itemployed.

All the deputies assembled,--solemn sacrifices were offered at Delphito Apollo, Diana, Latona, and Minerva; at Thermopylae to Ceres. Anoath was then administered, the form of which is preserved to us byAeschines.

"I swear," runs the oath, "never to subvert any Amphictyonic city--never to stop the courses of its waters in peace or in war. Those whoattempt such outrages I will oppose by arms; and the cities that sooffend I will destroy. If any ravages be committed in the territoryof the god, if any connive at such a crime, if any conceive a designhostile to the temple, against them will I use my hands, my feet, mywhole power and strength, so that the offenders may be brought topunishment."

Fearful and solemn imprecations on any violation of this engagementfollowed the oath.

These ceremonies performed, one of the hieromnemons [82] presided overthe council; to him were intrusted the collecting the votes, thereporting the resolutions, and the power of summoning the generalassembly, which was a convention separate from the council, held onlyon extraordinary occasions, and composed of residents and strangers,whom the solemnity of the meeting congregated in the neighbourhood.

VI. Throughout the historical times we can trace in this league noattempt to combine against the aggression of foreign states, exceptfor the purposes of preserving the sanctity of the temple. Thefunctions of the league were limited to the Amphictyonic tribes andwhether or not its early, and undefined, and obscure purpose, was tocheck wars among the confederate tribes, it could not attain even thatobject. Its offices were almost wholly confined to religion. Theleague never interfered when one Amphictyonic state exercised theworst severities against the other, curbing neither the ambition ofthe Athenian fleet nor the cruelties of the Spartan sword. But, uponall matters relative to religion, especially to the worship of Apollo,the assembly maintained an authority in theory supreme--in practice,equivocal and capricious.

As a political institution, the league contained one vice which couldnot fail to destroy its power. Each city in the twelve Amphictyonictribes, the most unimportant as the most powerful, had the same numberof votes. This rendered it against the interest of the greater states(on whom its consideration necessarily depended) to cement or increaseits political influence and thus it was quietly left to its naturaltendency to sacred purposes. Like all institutions which bestow uponman the proper prerogative of God, and affect authority over religiousand not civil opinions, the Amphictyonic council was not veryefficient in good: even in its punishment of sacrilege, it was onlydignified and powerful whenever the interests of the Delphic templewere at stake. Its most celebrated interference was with the town ofCrissa, against which the Amphictyons decreed war B. C. 505; theterritory of Crissa was then dedicated to the god of the temple.

VII. But if not efficient in good, the Amphictyonic council was notactive in evil. Many causes conspired to prevent the worst excessesto which religious domination is prone,--and this cause in particular.It was not composed of a separate, interested, and permanent class,but of citizens annually chosen from every state, who had a muchgreater interest in the welfare of their own state than in theincreased authority of the Amphictyonic council [83]. They werepriests but for an occasion--they were citizens by profession. Thejealousies of the various states, the constant change in thedelegates, prevented that energy and oneness necessary to any settleddesign of ecclesiastical ambition. Hence, the real influence of theAmphictyonic council was by no means commensurate with its graverenown; and when, in the time of Philip, it became an importantpolitical agent, it was only as the corrupt and servile tool of thatable monarch. Still it long continued, under the panoply of a greatreligious name, to preserve the aspect of dignity and power, until, atthe time of Constantine, it fell amid the ruins of the faith it hadaspired to protect. The creed that became the successor of thereligion of Delphi found a mightier Amphictyonic assembly in theconclaves of Rome. The papal institution possessed precisely thosequalities for directing the energies of states, for dictating to theambition of kings, for obtaining temporal authority under spiritualpretexts--which were wanting to the pagan.

CHAPTER III.

The Heroic Age.--Theseus.--His legislative Influence upon Athens.--Qualities of the Greek Heroes.--Effect of a Traditional Age upon theCharacter of a People.

I. As one who has been journeying through the dark [84] begins atlength to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so thatthe forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume anexaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,--so now,through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outlineof the HEROIC AGE. The careful and skeptical Thucydides has left us,in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture ofthe manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates thepossessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law andindistinct control;--of adventure--of excitement;--of daring qualitiesand lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to theNorth: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas,descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder aprofession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the ScandinavianHer-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greecetempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their windingbays, and wood-clad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold--ample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for theinexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages,valour is the true virtue--it dignifies the pursuits in which it isengaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourablein the Aegean as among the bold rovers of the Scandinavian race [85].If the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neitherwere the interior recesses of the country more protected from theviolence of marauders. The various tribes that passed into Greece, tocolonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of theinhabitants, who, retreating up the country, maintained themselves byplunder, or avenged themselves by outrage. The many crags andmountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautifulland of Greece, afforded their natural fortresses to these barbaroushordes. The chief who had committed a murder, or aspiredunsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with hisfriends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on thesurrounding villages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust orwant excited to the enterprise. No home was safe, no journey freefrom peril, and the Greeks passed their lives in armour. Thus,gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itselfthroughout Greece, until the evil became insufferable--until thepublic opinion of all the states and tribes, in which society hadestablished laws, was enlisted against the freebooter--until it grewan object of ambition to rid the neighbourhood of a scourge--and thesuccess of the attempt made the glory of the adventurer. Thennaturally arose the race of heroes--men who volunteered to seek therobber in his hold--and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courageof the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity of the demigod.At that time, too, internal circumstances in the different states--whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlikeHellenes, had gradually conspired to raise a military and fiercearistocracy above the rest of the population; and as arms became theinstruments of renown and power, so the wildest feats would lead tothe most extended fame.

II. The woods and mountains of Greece were not then cleared of thefirst rude aboriginals of nature--wild beasts lurked within itscaverns;--wolves abounded everywhere--herds of wild bulls, the largehorns of which Herodotus names with admiration, were common; and eventhe lion himself, so late as the invasion of Xerxes, was found in widedistricts from the Thracian Abdera to the Acarnanian Achelous. Thus,the feats of the early heroes appear to have been mainly directedagainst the freebooter or the wild beast; and among the triumphs ofHercules are recorded the extermination of the Lydian robbers, thedeath of Cacus, and the conquest of the lion of Nemea and the boar ofErymanthus.

Hercules himself shines conspicuously forth the great model of theseuseful adventurers. There is no doubt that a prince [86], so named,actually existed in Greece; and under the title of the ThebanHercules, is to be carefully distinguished, both from the god of Egyptand the peaceful Hercules of Phoenicia [87], whose worship was notunknown to the Greeks previous to the labours of his namesake. As thename of Hercules was given to the Theban hero (originally calledAlcaeus), in consequence of his exploits, it may be that hiscountrymen recognised in his character or his history somethinganalogous to the traditional accounts of the Eastern god. It was thecustom of the early Greeks to attribute to one man the actions whichhe performed in concert with others, and the reputation of Herculeswas doubtless acquired no less as the leader of an army than by theachievements of his personal prowess. His fame and his successexcited the emulation of his contemporaries, and pre-eminent amongthese ranks the Athenian Theseus.

III. In the romance which Plutarch has bequeathed to us, under thetitle of a "History of Theseus," we seem to read the legends of ourown fabulous days of chivalry. The adventures of an Amadis or aPalmerin are not more knightly nor more extravagant.

According to Plutarch, Aegeus, king of Athens, having no children,went to Delphi to consult the oracle how that misfortune might berepaired. He was commanded not to approach any woman till he returnedto Athens; but the answer was couched in mystic and allegorical terms,and the good king was rather puzzled than enlightened by the reply.He betook himself therefore to Troezene, a small town in Peloponnesus,founded by Pittheus, of the race of Pelops, a man eminent in that dayfor wisdom and sagacity. He communicated to him the oracle, andbesought his interpretation. Something there was in the divine answerwhich induced Pittheus to draw the Athenian king into an illicitintercourse with his own daughter, Aethra. The princess became withchild; and, before his departure from Troezene, Aegeus deposited asword and a pair of sandals in a cavity concealed by a huge stone[88], and left injunctions with Aethra that, should the fruit of theirintercourse prove a male child, and able, when grown up, to remove thestone, she should send him privately to Athens with the sword andsandals in proof of his birth; for Aegeus had a brother named Pallas,who, having a large family of sons, naturally expected, from thefailure of the direct line, to possess himself or his children of theAthenian throne; and the king feared, should the secret of hisintercourse with Aethra be discovered before the expected child hadarrived to sufficient strength to protect himself, that either bytreason or assassination the sons of Pallas would despoil the rightfulheir of his claim to the royal honours. Aethra gave birth to Theseus,and Pittheus concealed the dishonour of his family by asserting thatNeptune, the god most honoured at Troezene, had condescended to be thefather of the child:--the gods were very convenient personages inthose days. As the boy grew up, he evinced equal strength of body andnobleness of mind; and at length the time arrived when Aethracommunicated to him the secret of his birth, and led him to the stonewhich concealed the tokens of his origin. He easily removed it, andrepaired by land to Athens.

At that time, as I have before stated, Greece was overrun by robbers:Hercules had suppressed them for awhile; but the Theban hero was nowat the feet of the Lydian Omphale, and the freebooters had reappearedalong the mountainous recesses of the Peloponnesus; the journey byland was therefore not only longer, but far more perilous, than avoyage by sea, and Pittheus earnestly besought his grandson to preferthe latter. But it was the peril of the way that made its charm inthe eyes of the young hero, and the fame of Hercules had long inspiredhis dreams by night [89], and his thoughts by day. With his father'ssword, then, he repaired to Athens. Strange and wild were theadventures that befell him. In Epidauria he was attacked by acelebrated robber, whom he slew, and whose club he retained as hisfavourite weapon. In the Isthmus, Sinnis, another bandit, who hadbeen accustomed to destroy the unfortunate travellers who fell in hisway by binding them to the boughs of two pine trees (so that when thetrees, released, swung back to their natural position, the victim wastorn asunder, limb by limb), was punished by the same death he haddevised for others; and here occurs one of those anecdotesillustrative of the romance of the period, and singularly analogous tothe chivalry of Northern fable, which taught deference to women, andrewarded by the smiles of the fair the exploits of the bold. Sinnis,"the pine bender," had a daughter remarkable for beauty, whoconcealed herself amid the shrubs and rushes in terror of the victor.Theseus discovered her, praying, says Plutarch, in childish innocenceor folly, to the plants and bushes, and promising, if they wouldshelter her, never to destroy or burn them. A graceful legend, thatreminds us of the rich inventions of Spenser. But Theseus, with allgentle words and soothing vows, allured the maiden from her retreat,and succeeded at last in obtaining her love and its rewards.

Continued adventures--the conquest of Phaea, a wild sow (or a femalerobber, so styled from the brutality of her life)--the robber Scironcast headlong from a precipice--Procrustes stretched on his own bed--attested the courage and fortune of the wanderer, and at length hearrived at the banks of the Cephisus. Here he was saluted by some ofthe Phytalidae, a sacred family descended from Phytalus, the belovedof Ceres, and was duly purified from the blood of the savages he hadslain. Athens was the first place at which he was hospitablyentertained. He arrived at an opportune moment; the Colchian Medea,of evil and magic fame, had fled from Corinth and taken refuge withAegeus, whose affections she had insnared. By her art she promisedhim children to supply his failing line, and she gave full trial tothe experiment by establishing herself the partner of the royal couch.But it was not likely that the numerous sons of Pallas would regardthis connexion with indifference, and faction and feud reignedthroughout the city. Medea discovered the secret of the birth ofTheseus; and, resolved by poison to rid herself of one who wouldnaturally interfere with her designs on Aegeus, she took advantage ofthe fear and jealousies of the old king, and persuaded him to becomeher accomplice in the premeditated crime. A banquet, according to thewont of those hospitable times, was given to the stranger. The kingwas at the board, the cup of poison at hand, when Theseus, wishing toprepare his father for the welcome news he had to divulge, drew thesword or cutlass which Aegeus had made the token of his birth, andprepared to carve with it the meat that was set before him. The swordcaught the eye of the king--he dashed the poison to the ground, andafter a few eager and rapid questions, recognised his son in hisintended victim. The people were assembled--Theseus was acknowledgedby the king, and received with joy by the multitude, who had alreadyheard of the feats of the hero. The traditionary place where thepoison fell was still shown in the time of Plutarch. The sons ofPallas ill brooked the arrival and acknowledgment of this unexpectedheir to the throne. They armed themselves and their followers, andprepared for war. But one half of their troops, concealed in ambush,were cut off by Theseus (instructed in their movements by thetreachery of a herald), and the other half, thus reduced, were obligedto disperse. So Theseus remained the undisputed heir to the Athenianthrone.

IV. It would be vain for the historian, but delightful for the poet,to follow at length this romantic hero through all his reputedenterprises. I can only rapidly sketch the more remarkable. I pass,then, over the tale how he captured alive the wild bull of Marathon,and come at once to that expedition to Crete, which is indissolublyintwined with immortal features of love and poetry. It is relatedthat Androgeus, a son of Minos, the celebrated King of Crete, and byhis valour worthy of such a sire, had been murdered in Attica; somesuppose by the jealousies of Aegeus, who appears to have had asingular distrust of all distinguished strangers. Minos retaliated bya war which wasted Attica, and was assisted in its ravages by thepestilence and the famine. The oracle of Apollo, which often laudablyreconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest byenjoining the Athenians to appease the just indignation of Minos.They despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Crete, and consented, intoken of submission, to send every ninth year a tribute of sevenvirgins and seven young men. The little intercourse that then existedbetween states, conjoined with the indignant grief of the parents atthe loss of their children, exaggerated the evil of the tribute. Thehostages were said by the Athenians to be exposed in an intricatelabyrinth, and devoured by a monster, the creature of unnaturalintercourse, half man half bull; but the Cretans, certainly the bestauthority in the matter, stripped the account of the fable, anddeclared that the labyrinth was only a prison in which the youths andmaidens were confined on their arrival--that Minos instituted games inhonour of Androgeus, and that the Athenian captives were the prize ofthe victors. The first victor was the chief of the Cretan army, namedTaurus, and he, being fierce and unmerciful, treated the slaves hethus acquired with considerable cruelty. Hence the origin of thelabyrinth and the Minotaur. And Plutarch, giving this explanation ofthe Cretans, cites Aristotle to prove that the youths thus sent werenot put to death by Minos, but retained in servile employments, andthat their descendants afterward passed into Thrace, and were calledBottiaeans. We must suppose, therefore, in consonance not only withthese accounts, but the manners of the age, that the tribute wasmerely a token of submission, and the objects of it merely consideredas slaves. [90]

Of Minos himself all accounts are uncertain. There seems nosufficient ground to doubt, indeed, his existence, nor the extendedpower which, during his reign, Crete obtained in Greece. It is mostprobable that it was under Phoenician influence that Crete obtainedits maritime renown; but there is no reason to suppose Minos himselfPhoenician.

After the return of Theseus, the time came when the tribute to Cretewas again to be rendered. The people murmured their dissatisfaction."It was the guilt of Aegeus," said they, "which caused the wrath ofMinos, yet Aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful childrenwere sacrificed to the Cretan barbarity, but the doubtful andillegitimate stranger, whom Aegeus had adopted, went safe and free."Theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted onbeing himself included in the seven.

V. Twice before had this human tribute been sent to Crete; and intoken of the miserable and desperate fate which, according to vulgarbelief, awaited the victims, a black sail had been fastened to theship.

But this time, Aegeus, inspired by the cheerful confidence of his son,gave the pilot a white sail, which he was to hoist, if, on his return,he bore back Theseus in safety: if not, the black was once more to bethe herald of an unhappier fate. It is probable that Theseus did notesteem this among the most dangerous of his adventures. At the courtof the wise Pittheus, or in the course of his travels, he haddoubtless heard enough of the character of Minos, the greatest andmost sagacious monarch of his time, to be convinced that the son ofthe Athenian king would have little to fear from his severity. Hearrived at Crete, and obtained the love of Ariadne, the daughter ofMinos. Now follows a variety of contradictory accounts, the mostprobable and least poetical of which are given by Plutarch; but as heconcludes them all by the remark that none are of certainty, it is aneedless task to repeat them: it suffices to relate, that either withor without the consent of Minos, Theseus departed from Crete, incompany with Ariadne, and that by one means or the other hethenceforth freed the Athenians from the payment of the accustomedtribute. As it is obvious that with the petty force with which, byall accounts, he sailed to Crete, he could not have conquered thepowerful Minos in his own city, so it is reasonable to conclude, asone of the traditions hath it, that the king consented to his alliancewith his daughter, and, in consequence of that marriage, waived allfarther claim to the tribute of the Athenians. [91]

Equal obscurity veils the fate of the loving Ariadne; but thesupposition which seems least objectionable is, that Theseus wasdriven by storm either on Cyprus or Naxos, and Ariadne being then withchild, and rendered ill by the violence of the waves, was left onshore by her lover while he returned to take charge of his vessel;that she died in childbed, and that Theseus, on his return, wasgreatly afflicted, and instituted an annual festival in her honour.While we adopt the story most probable in itself, and most honourableto the character of the Athenian hero, we cannot regret the variousromance which is interwoven with the tale of the unfortunate Cretan,since it has given us some of the most beautiful inventions ofpoetry;--the Labyrinth love-lighted by Ariadne--the Cretan maiddeserted by the stranger with whom she fled--left forlorn and alone onthe Naxian shore--and consoled by Bacchus and his satyr horde.

VI. Before he arrived at Athens, Theseus rested at Delos, where he issaid to have instituted games, and to have originated the custom ofcrowning the victor with the palm. Meanwhile Aegeus waited the returnof his son. On the Cecropian rock that yet fronts the sea, he watchedthe coming of the vessel and the waving of the white sail: the mastsappeared--the ship approached--the white sail was not visible: in thejoy and the impatience of the homeward crew, the pilot had forgottento hoist the appointed signal, and the old man in despair threwhimself from the rock and was dashed to pieces. Theseus received thenews of his father's death with sorrow and lamentation. His triumphand return were recorded by periodical festivals, in which the fate ofAegeus was typically alluded to, and the vessel of thirty oars withwhich he had sailed to Crete was preserved by the Athenians to thetimes of Demetrius the Phalerean--so often new-pieced and repaired,that it furnished a favourite thesis to philosophical disputants,whether it was or was not the same vessel which Theseus had employed.

VII. Possessed of the supreme power, Theseus now bent his genius tothe task of legislation, and in this part of his life we tread uponfirmer ground, because the most judicious of the ancient historians[92] expressly attributes to the son of Aegeus those enactments whichso mainly contributed to consolidate the strength and union of theAthenian people.

Although Cecrops is said to have brought the tribes of Attica underone government, yet it will be remembered that he had divided theterritory into twelve districts, with a fortress or capital to each.By degrees these several districts had become more and more distinctfrom each other, and in many cases of emergency it was difficult toobtain a general assembly or a general concurrence of the people; nay,differences had often sprung up between the tribes, which had beenadjusted, not as among common citizens, by law, but as among jealousenemies, by arms and bloodshed. It was the master policy of Theseusto unite these petty commonwealths in one state. He applied inperson, and by all the arte of persuasion, to each tribe: the poor hefound ready enough to listen to an invitation which promised them theshelter of a city, and the protection of a single government from theoutrage of many tyrants: the rich and the powerful were more jealousof their independent, scattered, and, as it were, feudal life. Butthese he sought to conciliate by promises that could not but flatterthat very prejudice of liberty which naturally at first induced themto oppose his designs. He pledged his faith to a constitution whichshould leave the power in the hands of the many. He himself, asmonarch, desired only the command in war, and in peace theguardianship of laws he was equally bound to obey. Some were inducedby his persuasions, others by the fear of his power, until at lengthhe obtained his object. By common consent he dissolved the towns'-corporations and councils in each separate town, and built in Athensone common prytaneum or council-hall, existent still in the time ofPlutarch. He united the scattered streets and houses of the citadel,and the new town that had grown up along the plain, by the common nameof "Athens," and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea, in honourof the guardian goddess of the city, and as a memorial of theconfederacy. Adhering then to his promises, he set strict and narrowlimits to the regal power, created, under the name of eupatrids orwell-born, an hereditary nobility, and divided into two orders (thehusbandmen and mechanics) the remainder of the people. The care ofreligion, the explanation of the laws, and the situations ofmagistrates, were the privilege of the nobles. He thus laid thefoundation of a free, though aristocratic constitution--according toAristotle, the first who surrendered the absolute sway of royalty, andreceiving from the rhetorical Isocrates the praise that it was acontest which should give most, the people of power, or the king offreedom. As an extensive population was necessary to a powerfulstate, so Theseus invited to Athens all strangers willing to share inthe benefits of its protection, granting them equal security of lifeand law; and he set a demarcation to the territory of the state by theboundary of a pillar erected in the Isthmus, dividing Ionia fromPeloponnesus. The Isthmian games in honour of Neptune were also theinvention of Theseus.

VIII. Such are the accounts of the legislative enactments of Theseus.But of these we must reject much. We may believe from the account ofThucydides that jealousies among some Attic towns--which might eitherpossess, or pretend to, an independence never completely annihilatedby Cecrops and his successors, and which the settlement of foreignersof various tribes and habits would have served to increase--were sofar terminated as to induce submission to the acknowledged supremacyof Athens as the Attic capital; and that the right of justice, andeven of legislation, which had before been the prerogative of eachseparate town (to the evident weakening of the supreme and regalauthority), was now concentrated in the common council-house ofAthens. To Athens, as to a capital, the eupatrids of Attica wouldrepair as a general residence [93]. The city increased in populationand importance, and from this period Thucydides dates the enlargementof the ancient city, by the addition of the Lower Town. That Theseusvoluntarily lessened the royal power, it is not necessary to believe.In the heroic age a warlike race had sprung up, whom no Grecianmonarch appears to have attempted to govern arbitrarily in peace,though they yielded implicitly to his authority in war. Himself on anewly-won and uncertain throne, it was the necessity as well as thepolicy of Theseus to conciliate the most powerful of his subjects. Itmay also be conceded, that he more strictly defined the distinctionsbetween the nobles and the remaining classes, whether yeomen orhusbandmen, mechanics or strangers; and it is recorded that thehonours and the business of legislation were the province of theeupatrids. It is possible that the people might be occasionallyconvened--but it is clear that they had little, if any, share in thegovernment of the state. But the mere establishment and confirmationof a powerful aristocracy, and the mere collection of the populationinto a capital, were sufficient to prepare the way for far moredemocratic institutions than Theseus himself contemplated or designed.For centuries afterward an oligarchy ruled in Athens; but, freeitself, that oligarchy preserved in its monopoly the principles ofliberty, expanding in their influence with the progress of society.The democracy of Athens was not an ancient, yet not a sudden,constitution. It developed itself slowly, unconsciously,continuously--passing the allotted orbit of royalty, oligarchy,aristocracy, timocracy, tyranny, till at length it arrived at itsdazzling zenith, blazed--waned--and disappeared.

After the successful issue of his legislative attempts, we next hearof Theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song.On these later traditions, which belong to fable, it is not necessaryto dwell. Our own Coeur de Lion suggests no improbable resemblance toa spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and withoutseeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, ofeach legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that Theseus reallydeparted in quest of adventure from a dominion that afforded no scopefor a desultory and eager ambition; and that something of truth lurksbeneath many of the rich embellishments which his wanderings andexploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibilityof the age. During his absence, Menestheus, of the royal race ofAttica, who, Plutarch simply tells us, was the first of mankind thatundertook the profession of a demagogue, ingratiated himself with thepeople, or rather with the nobles. The absence of a king is alwaysthe nurse of seditions, and Menestheus succeeded in raising sopowerful a faction against the hero, that on his return Theseus wasunable to preserve himself in the government, and, pouring forth asolemn curse on the Athenians, departed to Scyros, where he eitherfell by accident from a precipice, or was thrown down by the king.His death at first was but little regarded; in after-times, to appeasehis ghost and expiate his curse, divine honours were awarded to hismemory; and in the most polished age of his descendants, his supposedremains, indicated by an eagle in the skeleton of a man of giantstature, with a lance of brass and a sword by his side, were broughtto Athens in the galley of Cimon, hailed by the shouts of a joyousmultitude, "as if the living Theseus were come again."

X. I have not altogether discarded, while I have abridged, thelegends relating to a hero who undoubtedly exercised considerableinfluence over his country and his time, because in those legends wetrace, better than we could do by dull interpretations equallyunsatisfactory though more prosaic, the effigy of the heroic age--notunillustrative of the poetry and the romance which at once formed andindicated important features in the character of the Athenians. Muchof the national spirit of every people, even in its most civilizedepochs, is to be traced to the influence of that age which may becalled the heroic. The wild adventurers of the early Greece tended tohumanize even in their excesses. It is true that there are manyinstances of their sternness, ferocity, and revenge;--they wereinsolent from the consciousness of surpassing strength;--often cruelfrom that contempt of life common to the warlike. But the darker sideof their character is far less commonly presented to us than thebrighter--they seem to have been alive to generous emotions morereadily than any other race so warlike in an age so rude--theiraffections were fervid as their hatreds--their friendships moreremarkable than their feuds. Even their ferocity was not, as with theScandinavian heroes, a virtue and a boast--their public opinionhonoured the compassionate and the clement. Thus Hercules is saidfirst to have introduced the custom of surrendering to the enemy thecorpses of their slain; and mildness, justice, and courtesy are noless his attributes than invincible strength and undaunted courage.Traversing various lands, these paladins of an elder chivalry acquiredan experience of different governments and customs, which assisted ontheir return to polish and refine the admiring tribes which theirachievements had adorned. Like the knights of a Northern mythus,their duty was to punish the oppressor and redress the wronged, andthey thus fixed in the wild elemeats of unsettled opinion a recognisedstandard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the themeof the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuatetheir offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure orexcellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble anational character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring andthe young:--and the traditional fame of a Hercules or a Theseus assistedto inspire the souls of those who, ages afterward, broke the Mede atMarathon, and arrested the Persian might in the Pass of Thermopylae.For, as the spirit of a poet has its influence on the destiny andcharacter of nations, so TIME itself hath his own poetry, precedingand calling forth the poetry of the human genius, and breathinginspirations, imaginative and imperishable, from the great deeds andgigantic images of an ancestral and traditionary age.

CHAPTER IV.

The Successors of Theseus.--The Fate of Codrus.--The Emigration ofNileus.--The Archons.--Draco.

I. The reputed period of the Trojan war follows close on the age ofHercules and Theseus; and Menestheus, who succeeded the latter hero onthe throne of Athens, led his countrymen to the immortal war.Plutarch and succeeding historians have not failed to notice theexpression of Homer, in which he applies the word demus or "people" tothe Athenians, as a proof of the popular government established inthat state. But while the line has been considered an interpolation,as late at least as the time of Solon, we may observe that it wasnever used by Homer in the popular and political sense it afterwardreceived. And he applies it not only to the state of Athens, but tothat of Ithaca, certainly no democracy. [94]

The demagogue king appears to have been a man of much warlike renownand skill, and is mentioned as the first who marshalled an army inrank and file. Returning from Troy, he died in the Isle of Melos, andwas succeeded by Demophoon, one of the sons of Theseus, who had alsofought with the Grecian army in the Trojan siege. In his time adispute between the Athenians and Argives was referred to fiftyarbiters of each nation, called Ephetae, the origin of the court sostyled, and afterward re-established with new powers by Draco.

To Demophoon succeeded his son Oxyntes, and to Oxyntes, Aphidas,murdered by his bastard brother Thymaetes. Thymaetes was the last ofthe race of Theseus who reigned in Athens. A dispute arose betweenthe Boeotians and the Athenians respecting the confines of theirseveral territories; it was proposed to decide the difference by asingle combat between Thymaetes and the King of the Boeotians.Thymaetes declined the contest. A Messenian exile, named Melanthus,accepted it, slew his antagonist by a stratagem, and, deposing thecowardly Athenian, obtained the sovereignty of Athens. WithMelanthus, who was of the race of Nestor, passed into Athens twonobles of the same house, Paeon and Alcmaeon, who were the founders ofthe Paeonids and Alcmaeonids, two powerful families, whose names oftenoccur in the subsequent history of Athens, and who, if they did notcreate a new order of nobility, at least sought to confine to theirown families the chief privileges of that which was established.

II. Melanthus was succeeded by his son Codrus, a man whose fame findsmore competitors in Roman than Grecian history. During his reign theDorians invaded Attica. They were assured of success by the Delphianoracle, on condition that they did not slay the Athenian king.Informed of the response, Codrus disguised himself as a peasant, and,repairing to the hostile force, sought a quarrel with some of thesoldiers, and was slain by them not far from the banks of the Ilissus[95]. The Athenians sent to demand the body of their king; and theDorians, no longer hoping of success, since the condition of theoracle was thus violated, broke up their encampment and relinquishedtheir design. Some of the Dorians had already by night secretlyentered the city and concealed themselves within its walls; but, asthe day dawned, and they found themselves abandoned by theirassociates and surrounded by the foe, they fled to the Areopagus andthe altars of the Furies; the refuge was deemed inviolable, and theDorians were dismissed unscathed--a proof of the awe already attachedto the rites of sanctuary [96]. Still, however, this invasion wasattended with the success of what might have been the principal objectof the invaders. Megara [97], which had hitherto been associated withAttica, was now seized by the Dorians, and became afterward a colonyof Corinth. This gallant but petty state had considerable influenceon some of the earlier events of Athenian history.

III. Codrus was the last of the Athenian kings. The Atheniansaffected the motives of reverence to his memory as an excuse forforbidding to the illustrious martyr the chance of an unworthysuccessor. But the aristocratic constitution had been morallystrengthened by the extinction of the race of Theseus and the jealousyof a foreign line; and the abolition of the monarchy was rather causedby the ambition of the nobles than the popular veneration for thepatriotism of Codrus. The name of king was changed into that ofarchon (magistrate or governor); the succession was still madehereditary, but the power of the ruler was placed under new limits,and he was obliged to render to the people, or rather to theeupatrids, an account of his government whenever they deemed itadvisable to demand it.

IV. Medon, the son of Codrus, was the first of these perpetualarchons. In that age bodily strength was still deemed an essentialvirtue in a chief; and Nileus, a younger brother of Medon, attemptedto depose the archon on no other pretence than that of his lameness.

A large portion of the people took advantage of the quarrel betweenthe brothers to assert that they would have no king but Jupiter. Atlength Medon had recourse to the oracle, which decided in his favour;and Nileus, with all the younger sons of Codrus, and accompanied by anumerous force, departed from Athens, and colonized that part of AsiaMinor celebrated in history under the name of Ionia. The rise, power,and influence of these Asiatic colonies we shall find a moreconvenient opportunity to notice. Medon's reign, thus freed from themore stirring spirits of his time, appears to have been prosperous andpopular; it was an era in the ancient world, when the lameness of aruler was discovered to be unconnected with his intellect! Thenfollows a long train of archons--peaceable and obscure. During aperiod estimated at three hundred years, the Athenians performedlittle that has descended to posterity--brief notices of pettyskirmishes, and trivial dissensions with their neighbours, alonediversify that great interval. Meanwhile, the Ionian colonies riserapidly into eminence and power. At length, on the death of Alcmaeon--the thirteenth and last perpetual archon--a new and more popularchange was introduced into the government. The sway of the archon waslimited to ten years. This change slowly prepared the way to changesstill more important. Hitherto the office had been confined to thetwo Neleid houses of Codrus and Alcmaeon;--in the archonship ofHippomenes it was thrown open to other distinguished families; and atlength, on the death of Eryxias, the last of the race of Codrus, thefailure of that ancient house in its direct line (indirectly it stillcontinued, and the blood of Codrus flowed through the veins of Solon)probably gave excuse and occasion for abolishing the investment of thesupreme power in one magistrate; nine were appointed, each with thetitle of archon (though the name was more emphatically given to thechief of the number), and each with separate functions. Thisinstitution continued to the last days of Athenian freedom. Thischange took place in the 24th Olympiad.

V. In the 39th Olympiad, Draco, being chief archon, was deputed toinstitute new laws in B. C. 621. He was a man concerning whom historyis singularly brief; we know only that he was of a virtuous andaustere renown--that he wrote a great number of verses, as littledurable as his laws [98]. As for the latter--when we learn that theywere stern and bloody beyond precedent--we have little difficulty inbelieving that they were inefficient.

VI. I have hastened over this ambiguous and uninteresting period witha rapidity I trust all but antiquaries will forgive. Hitherto we havebeen in the land of shadow--we approach the light. The empty names ofapocryphal beings which we have enumerated are for the most part asspectres, so dimly seen as to be probably delusions--invoked to pleasea fanciful curiosity, but without an object to satisfy the reason orexcuse the apparition. If I am blamed for not imitating those whohave sought, by weaving together disconnected hints and subtleconjectures, to make a history from legends, to overturn what has beenpopularly believed, by systems equally contradictory, though morelearnedly fabricated;--if I am told that I might have made thechronicle thus briefly given extend to a greater space, and sparklewith more novel speculation, I answer that I am writing the history ofmen and not of names--to the people and not to scholars--and that noresearches however elaborate, no conjectures however ingenious, coulddraw any real or solid moral from records which leave us ignorant bothof the characters of men and the causes of events. What matters whowas Ion, or whence the first worship of Apollo? what matterrevolutions or dynasties, ten or twelve centuries before Athensemerged from a deserved obscurity?--they had no influence upon herafter greatness; enigmas impossible to solve--if solved, butscholastic frivolities.

Fortunately, as we desire the history of a people, so it is when theAthenians become a people, that we pass at once from tradition intohistory.

I pause to take a brief survey of the condition of the rest of Greeceprior to the age of Solon.

CHAPTER V.

A General Survey of Greece and the East previous to the time ofSolon.--The Grecian Colonies.--The Isles.--Brief account of the Stateson the Continent.--Elis and the Olympic Games.

I. On the north, Greece is separated from Macedonia by the Cambunianmountains; on the west spreads the Ionian, on the south and east theAegean Sea. Its greatest length is two hundred and twentygeographical miles; its greatest width one hundred and forty. Nocontrast can be more startling than the speck of earth which Greeceoccupies in the map of the world, compared to the space claimed by theGrecian influences in the history of the human mind. In that contrastitself is the moral which Greece has left us--nor can volumes moreemphatically describe the triumph of the Intellectual over theMaterial. But as nations, resembling individuals, do not becomeillustrious from their mere physical proportions; as in both, renownhas its moral sources; so, in examining the causes which conduced tothe eminence of Greece, we cease to wonder at the insignificance ofits territories or the splendour of its fame. Even in geographicalcircumstance Nature had endowed the country of the Hellenes with giftswhich amply atoned the narrow girth of its confines. The mostsouthern part of the continent of Europe, it contained within itselfall the advantages of sea and land; its soil, though unequal in itsproduct, is for the most part fertile and abundant; it is intersectedby numerous streams, and protected by chains of mountains; its plainsand valleys are adapted to every product most necessary to the supportof the human species; and the sun that mellows the fruits of nature issufficiently tempered not to relax the energies of man. Bordered onthree sides by the sea, its broad and winding extent of coast earlyconduced to the spirit of enterprise; and, by innumerable bays andharbours, proffered every allurement to that desire of gain which isthe parent of commerce and the basis of civilization. At the periodin which Greece rose to eminence it was in the very centre of the mostadvanced and flourishing states of Europe and of Asia. The attentionof its earlier adventurers was directed not only to the shores ofItaly, but to the gorgeous cities of the East, and the wise and hoaryinstitutions of Egypt. If from other nations they borrowed less thanhas been popularly supposed, the very intercourse with those nationsalone sufficed to impel and develop the faculties of an imitative andyouthful people;--while, as the spirit of liberty broke out in all theGrecian states, producing a restless competition both among thecitizens in each city and the cities one with another, no energy wasallowed to sleep until the operations of an intellect, perpetuallyroused and never crippled, carried the universal civilization to itsheight. Nature herself set the boundaries of the river and themountain to the confines of the several states--the smallness of eachconcentrated power into a focus--the number of all heightenedemulation to a fever. The Greek cities had therefore, above all othernations, the advantage of a perpetual collision of mind--a perpetualintercourse with numerous neighbours, with whom intellect was ever atwork--with whom experiment knew no rest. Greece, taken collectively,was the only free country (with the exception of Phoenician states andcolonies perhaps equally civilized) in the midst of enlighteneddespotisms; and in the ancient world, despotism invented and shelteredthe arts which liberty refined and perfected [99]: Thus considered,her greatness ceases to be a marvel--the very narrowness of herdominions was a principal cause of it--and to the most favourablecircumstances of nature were added circumstances the most favourableof time.

If, previous to the age of Solon, we survey the histories of Asia, wefind that quarter of the globe subjected to great and terriblerevolutions, which confined and curbed the power of its variousdespotisms. Its empires for the most part built up by the successfulinvasions of Nomad tribes, contained in their very vastness theelements of dissolution. The Assyrian Nineveh had been conquered bythe Babylonians and the Medes (B. C. 606); and Babylon, under the newChaldaean dynasty, was attaining the dominant power of western Asia.The Median monarchy was scarce recovering from the pressure ofbarbarian foes, and Cyrus had not as yet arisen to establish thethrone of Persia. In Asia Minor, it is true, the Lydian empire hadattained to great wealth and luxury, and was the most formidable enemyof the Asiatic Greeks, yet it served to civilize them even while itawed. The commercial and enterprising Phoenicians, now foreboding themarch of the Babylonian king, who had "taken counsel against Tyre, thecrowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are thehonourable of the earth," at all times were precluded from the desireof conquest by their divided states [100], formidable neighbours, andtrading habits.

In Egypt a great change had operated upon the ancient character; thesplendid dynasty of the Pharaohs was no more. The empire, rent intoan oligarchy of twelve princes, had been again united under thesceptre of one by the swords of Grecian mercenaries (B. C. 616); andNeco, the son of the usurper--a man of mighty intellect and vastdesigns--while he had already adulterated the old Egyptian customswith the spirit of Phoenician and Greek adventure, found his field ofaction only in the East (defeats Josiah B. C. 609). As yet, then, noforeign enemy had disturbed the early rise of the several states ofGreece; they were suffered to form their individual demarcationstranquilly and indelibly; and to progress to that point between socialamenities and chivalric hardihood, when, while war is the most sternlyencountered, it the most rapidly enlightens. The peace that followsthe first war of a half-civilized nation is usually the great era ofits intellectual eminence.

II. At this time the colonies in Asia Minor were far advanced incivilization beyond the Grecian continent. Along the western coast ofthat delicious district--on a shore more fertile, under a heaven morebright, than those of the parent states--the Aeolians, Ionians, andDorians, in a remoter age, had planted settlements and founded cities(probably commenced under Penthilus, son of Orestes, about B. C.1068). The Aeolian colonies (the result of the Dorian immigrations)[101] occupied the coasts of commenced Mysia and Caria--on themainland twelve cities--the most renowned of which were Cyme andSmyrna; and the islands of the Heccatonnesi, Tenedos, and Lesbos, thelast illustrious above the rest, and consecrated by the muses ofSappho and Alcaeus. They had also settlements about Mount Ida. Theirvarious towns were independent of each other; but Mitylene, in theIsle of Lesbos, was regarded as their common capital. The trade ofMitylene was extensive--its navy formidable.

The Ionian colonies (probably commenced about 988 B. C.), foundedsubsequently to the Aeolian, but also (though less immediately) aconsequence of the Dorian revolution, were peopled not only byIonians, but by various nations, led by the sons of Codrus. In theislands of Samos and Chios, on the southern coast of Lydia, whereCaria stretches to the north, they established their voluptuoussettlements known by the name "Ionia." Theirs were the cities ofMyus, and Priene, Colophon, Ephesus, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomene,Erythrae, Phocae, and Miletus:--in the islands of Samos and Chios weretwo cities of the same name as the isles themselves. The chief of theIonian cities at the time on which we enter, and second perhaps intrade and in civilization to none but the great Phoenician states, wasthe celebrated Miletus--founded first by the Carians--exalted to herrenown by the Ionians (Naval dominion of Miletus commenced B. C. 750).Her streets were the mart of the world; along the Euxine and the PalusMaeotis, her ships rode in the harbours of a hundred of her colonies.Here broke the first light of the Greek philosophy. But if inferiorto this, their imperial city, each of the Ionian towns had its titleto renown. Here flourished already music, and art, and song. Thetrade of Phocae extended to the coasts of Italy and Gaul. Ephesus hadnot yet risen to its meridian--it was the successor of Miletus andPhocaea. These Ionian states, each independent of the other, wereunited by a common sanctuary--the Panionium (Temple of Neptune), whichmight be seen far off on the headland of that Mycale afterward thewitness of one of the proudest feats of Grecian valour. Long free,Ionia became tributary to the Lydian kings, and afterward to the greatPersian monarchy.

In the islands of Cos and Rhodes, and on the southern shores of Caria,spread the Dorian colonies--planted subsequently to the Ionian bygradual immigrations. If in importance and wealth the Aeolian wereinferior to the Ionian colonies, so were the Dorian colonies to theAeolian. Six cities (Ialyssus, Camirus, and Lindus, in Rhodes; inCos, a city called from the island; Cnidus and Halicarnassus, on themainland) were united, like the Ionians, by a common sanctuary--theTemple of Apollo Triopius.

Besides these colonies--the Black Sea, the Palus Maeotis, thePropontis, the coasts of Lower Italy, the eastern and southern shoresof Sicily [102], Syracuse, the mightiest of Grecian offspring, and thedaughter of Corinth,--the African Cyrene,--not enumerating settlementsmore probably referable to a later date, attested the active spiritand extended navigation of early Greece.

The effect of so vast and flourishing a colonization was necessarilyprodigious upon the moral and intellectual spirit of the mother land.The seeds scattered over the earth bore their harvests to her garner.

III. Among the Grecian isles, the glory of Minos had long passed fromCrete (about 800 B. C.). The monarchical form of government hadyielded to the republican, but in its worst shape--the oligarchic.But the old Cretan institutions still lingered in the habits ofprivate life;--while the jealousies and commotions of its severalcities, each independent, exhausted within itself those powers which,properly concentrated and wisely directed, might have placed Crete atthe head of Greece.

Cyprus, equally favoured by situation with Crete, and civilized by theconstant influence of the Phoenicians, once its masters, was attachedto its independence, but not addicted to warlike enterprise. It was,like Crete, an instance of a state which seemed unconscious of thefacilities for command and power which it had received from nature.The Island of Corcyra (a Corinthian colony) had not yet arrived at itsday of power. This was reserved for that period when, after thePersian war, it exchanged an oligarchic for a democratic action, whichwore away, indeed, the greatness of the country in its struggles forsupremacy, obstinately and fatally resisted by the antagonistprinciple.

Of the Cyclades--those beautiful daughters of Crete--Delos, sacred toApollo, and possessed principally by the Ionians, was the mosteminent. But Paros boasted not only its marble quarries, but thevalour of its inhabitants, and the vehement song of Archilochus.

Euboea, neighbouring Attica, possessed two chief cities, Eretria andChalcis, governed apparently by timocracies, and frequently at warwith each other. Though of importance as connected with thesubsequent history of Athens, and though the colonization of Chalciswas considerable, the fame of Euboea was scarcely proportioned to itsextent as one of the largest islands of the Aegean; and was faroutshone by the small and rocky Aegina--the rival of Athens, and atthis time her superior in maritime power and commercial enterprise.Colonized by Epidaurus, Aegina soon became independent; but theviolence of party, and the power of the oligarchy, while feeding itsenergies, prepared its downfall.

IV. As I profess only to delineate in this work the rise and fall ofthe Athenians, so I shall not deem it at present necessary to do morethan glance at the condition of the continent of Greece previous tothe time of Solon. Sparta alone will demand a more attentive survey.

Taking our station on the citadel of Athens, we behold, far projectinginto the sea, the neighbouring country of Megaris, with Megara for itscity. It was originally governed by twelve kings; the last, Hyperion,being assassinated, its affairs were administered by magistrates, andit was one of the earliest of the countries of Greece which adoptedrepublican institutions. Nevertheless, during the reigns of theearlier kings of Attica, it was tributary to them [103]. We have seenhow the Dorians subsequently wrested it from the Athenians [104]; andit underwent long and frequent warfare for the preservation of itsindependence from the Dorians of Corinth. About the year 640, apowerful citizen named Theagenes wrested the supreme power from thestern aristocracy which the Dorian conquest had bequeathed, though theyoke of Corinth was shaken off. The tyrant--for such was theappellation given to a successful usurper--was subsequently deposed,and the democratic government restored; and although that democracywas one of the most turbulent in Greece, it did not prevent thislittle state from ranking among the most brilliant actors in thePersian war.

V. Between Attica and Megaris we survey the Isle of Salamis--theright to which we shall find contested both by Athens and theMegarians.

VI. Turning our eyes now to the land, we may behold, borderingAttica--from which a mountainous tract divides it--the mythologicalBoeotia, the domain of the Phoenician Cadmus, and the birthplace ofPolynices and Oedipus. Here rise the immemorial mountains of Heliconand Cithaeron--the haunt of the muses; here Pentheus fell beneath theraging bands of the Bacchanals, and Actaeon endured the wrath of theGoddess of the Woods; here rose the walls of Thebes to the harmony ofAmphion's lyre--and still, in the time of Pausanias, the Thebansshowed, to the admiration of the traveller, the place where Cadmussowed the dragon-seed--the images of the witches sent by Juno tolengthen the pains of Alcmena--the wooden statue wrought by Daedalus--and the chambers of Harmonia and of Semele. No land was moresanctified by all the golden legends of poetry--and of all Greece nopeople was less alive to the poetical inspiration. Devoted, for themost part, to pastoral pursuits, the Boeotians were ridiculed by theirlively neighbours for an inert and sluggish disposition--a reproachwhich neither the song of Hesiod and Pindar, nor the glories of Thebesand Plataea, were sufficient to repel. As early as the twelfthcentury (B. C.) royalty was abolished in Boeotia--its territory wasdivided into several independent states, of which Thebes was theprincipal, and Plataea and Cheronaea among the next in importance.Each had its own peculiar government; and, before the Persian war,oligarchies had obtained the ascendency in these several states. Theywere united in a league, of which Thebes was the head; but theambition and power of that city kept the rest in perpetual jealousy,and weakened, by a common fear and ill-smothered dissensions, acountry otherwise, from the size of its territories [105] and thenumber of its inhabitants, calculated to be the principal power ofGreece. Its affairs were administered by eleven magistrates, orboeotarchs, elected by four assemblies held in the four districts intowhich Boeotia was divided.

VII. Beyond Boeotia lies Phocis, originally colonized, according tothe popular tradition, by Phocus from Corinth. Shortly after theDorian irruption, monarchy was abolished and republican institutionssubstituted. In Phocis were more than twenty states independent ofthe general Phocian government, but united in a congress held atstated times on the road between Daulis and Delphi. Phocis containedalso the city of Crissa, with its harbour and the surroundingterritory inhabited by a fierce and piratical population, and thesacred city of Delphi, on the southwest of Parnassus.

VIII. Of the oracle of Delphi I have before spoken--it remains onlynow to point out to the reader the great political cause of its riseinto importance. It had been long established, but without anybrilliant celebrity, when happened that Dorian revolution which iscalled the "Return of the Heraclidae." The Dorian conquerors hadearly steered their course by the advice of the Delphian oracle, whichappeared artfully to favour their pretensions, and which, adjoiningthe province of Doris, had imposed upon them the awe, and perhaps feltfor them the benevolence, of a sacred neighbour. Their ultimatetriumph not only gave a striking and supreme repute to the oracle, butsecured the protection and respect of a race now become the mostpowerful of Greece. From that time no Dorian city ever undertook anenterprise without consulting the Pythian voice; the example becamegeneral, and the shrine of the deity was enriched by offerings notonly from the piety of Greece, but the credulous awe of barbariankings. Perhaps, though its wealth was afterward greater, itsauthority was never so unquestioned as for a period dating from abouta century preceding the laws of Solon to the end of the Persian war.Delphi was wholly an independent state, administered by a rigidaristocracy [106]; and though protected by the Amphictyonic council,received from its power none of those haughty admonitions with whichthe defenders of a modern church have often insulted their charge.The temple was so enriched by jewels, statues, and vessels of gold,that at the time of the invasion of Xerxes its wealth was said toequal in value the whole of the Persian armament and so wonderful wasits magnificence, that it appeared more like the Olympus of the godsthan a human temple in their honour. On the ancient Delphi stands nowthe monastery of Kastri. But still you discover the terraces oncecrowded by fans--still, amid gloomy chasms, bubbles the Castalianspring--and yet permitted to the pilgrim's gaze is the rocky bath ofthe Pythia, and the lofty halls of the Corycian Cave.

IX. Beyond Phocis lies the country of the Locrians, divided intothree tribes independent of each other--the Locri Ozolae, the LocriOpuntii, the Locri Epicnemidii. The Locrians (undistinguished inhistory) changed in early times royal for aristocratic institutions.

The nurse of the Dorian race--the small province of Doris--borders theLocrian territory to the south of Mount Oeta; while to the west ofLocris spreads the mountainous Aetolia, ranging northward from Pindusto the Ambracian Bay. Aetolia gave to the heroic age the names ofMeleager and Diomed, but subsequently fell into complete obscurity.The inhabitants were rude and savage, divided into tribes, nor emergedinto importance until the latest era of the Grecian history. Thepolitical constitution of Aetolia, in the time referred to, isunknown.

X. Acarnania, the most western country of central Greece, appearslittle less obscure at this period than Aetolia, on which it borders;with Aetolia it arose into eminence in the Macedonian epoch of Greekhistory.

XI. Northern Greece contains two countries--Thessaly and Epirus.

In Thessaly was situated the long and lofty mountain of the divineOlympus, and to the more southern extreme rose Pindus and Oeta. Itsinhabitants were wild and hardy, and it produced the most celebratedbreed of horses in Greece. It was from Thessaly that the Hellenescommenced their progress over Greece--it was in the kingdoms ofThessaly that the race of Achilles held their sway; but its laterhistory was not calculated to revive the fame of the Homeric hero; itappears to have shared but little of the republican spirit of the morefamous states of Greece. Divided into four districts (Thessaliotis,Pelasgiotis, Phthiotis, and Hestiaeotis), the various states ofThessaly were governed either by hereditary princes or nobles of vastpossessions. An immense population of serfs, or penestae, contributedto render the chiefs of Thessaly powerful in war and magnificent inpeace. Their common country fell into insignificance from the want ofa people--but their several courts were splendid from the wealth of anobility.

XII. Epirus was of somewhat less extent than Thessaly, and far lessfertile; it was inhabited by various tribes, some Greek, somebarbarian, the chief of which was the Molossi, governed by kings whoboasted their descent from Achilles. Epirus has little importance orinterest in history until the sun of Athens had set, during theascendency of the Macedonian kings. It contained the independentstate of Ambracia, peopled from Corinth, and governed by republicaninstitutions. Here also were the sacred oaks of the oracular Dodona.

XIII. We now come to the states of the Peloponnesus, which containedeight countries.

Beyond Megaris lay the territory of Corinth: its broad bay adapted itfor commerce, of which it availed itself early; even in the time ofHomer it was noted for its wealth. It was subdued by the Dorians, andfor five generations the royal power rested with the descendants ofAletes [107], of the family of the Heraclidae. By a revolution, thecauses of which are unknown to us, the kingdom then passed to Bacchis,the founder of an illustrious race (the Bacchiadae), who reigned firstas kings, and subsequently as yearly magistrates, under the name ofPrytanes. In the latter period the Bacchiadae were certainly not asingle family, but a privileged class--they intermarried only witheach other,--the administrative powers were strictly confined to them--and their policy, if exclusive, seems to have been vigorous andbrilliant. This government was destroyed, as under its sway thepeople increased in wealth and importance; a popular movement, headedby Cypselus, a man of birth and fortune, replaced an able oligarchy byan abler demagogue (B. C. 655). Cypselus was succeeded by thecelebrated Heriander (B. C. 625), a man, whose vices were perhapsexaggerated, whose genius was indisputable. Under his nephewPsammetichus, Corinth afterward regained its freedom. TheCorinthians, in spite of every change in the population, retainedtheir luxury to the last, and the epistles of Alciphron, in the secondcentury after Christ, note the ostentation of the few and the povertyof the many. At the time now referred to, Corinth--the Genoa ofGreece--was high in civilization, possessed of a considerable navalpower, and in art and commerce was the sole rival on the Greciancontinent to the graceful genius and extensive trade of the Ioniancolonies.

XIV. Stretching from Corinth along the coast opposite Attica, webehold the ancient Argolis. Its three principal cities were Argos,Mycenae, and Epidaurus. Mycenae, at the time of the Trojan war, wasthe most powerful of the states of Greece; and Argos, next to Sicyori,was reputed the most ancient. Argolis suffered from the Dorianrevolution, and shortly afterward the regal power, graduallydiminishing, lapsed into republicanism [108]. Argolis containedvarious independent states--one to every principal city.

XV. On the other side of Corinth, almost opposite Argolis, we findthe petty state of Sicyon. This was the most ancient of the Grecianstates, and was conjoined to the kingdom of Agamemnon at the Trojanwar. At first it was possessed by Ionians, expelled subsequently bythe Dorians, and not long after seems to have lapsed into a democraticrepublic. A man of low birth, Orthagoras, obtained the tyranny, andit continued in his family for a century, the longest tyranny inGreece, because the gentlest. Sicyon was of no marked influence atthe period we are about to enter, though governed by an able tyrant,Clisthenes, whose policy it was to break the Dorian nobility, whileuniting, as in a common interest, popular laws and regal authority.

XVI. Beyond Sicyon we arrive at Achaia. We have already seen thatthis district was formerly possessed by the Ionians, who were expelledby some of the Achaeans who escaped the Dorian yoke. Governed firstby a king, it was afterward divided into twelve republics, leaguedtogether. It was long before Achaia appeared on that heated stage ofaction, which allured the more restless spirits of Athens andLacedaemon.

XVII. We now pause at Elis, which had also felt the revolution of theHeraclidae, and was possessed by their comrades the Aetolians.

The state of Elis underwent the general change from monarchy torepublicanism; but republicanism in its most aristocratic form;--growing more popular at the period of the Persian wars, but, withoutthe convulsions which usually mark the progress of democracy. Themagistrates of the commonwealth were the superintendents of the SacredGames. And here, diversifying this rapid, but perhaps to the generalreader somewhat tedious survey of the political and geographicalaspect of the states of Greece, we will take this occasion to examinethe nature and the influence of those celebrated contests, which gaveto Elis its true title to immortality.

XVIII. The origin of the Olympic Games is lost in darkness. Thelegends which attribute their first foundation to the times ofdemigods and heroes, are so far consonant with truth, that exhibitionsof physical strength made the favourite diversion of that wild andbarbarous age which is consecrated to the heroic. It is easy toperceive that the origin of athletic games preceded the date ofcivilization; that, associated with occasions of festival, they, likefestivals, assumed a sacred character, and that, whether firstinstituted in honour of a funeral, or in celebration of a victory, orin reverence to a god,--religion combined with policy to transmit aninspiring custom to a more polished posterity. And though we cannotliterally give credit to the tradition which assigns the restorationof these games to Lycurgus, in concert with Iphitus, king of Elis, andCleosthenes of Pisa, we may suppose at least that to Elis, to Pisa,and to Sparta, the institution was indebted for its revival.

The Dorian Oracle of Delphi gave its sanction to a ceremony, therestoration of which was intended to impose a check upon the wars anddisorders of the Peloponnesus. Thus authorized, the festival wassolemnized at the temple of Jupiter, at Olympia, near Pisa, a town inElis. It was held every fifth year; it lasted four days. Itconsisted in the celebration of games in honour of Jupiter andHercules. The interval between each festival was called, an Olympiad.After the fiftieth Olympiad (B. C. 580), the whole management of thegames, and the choice of the judges, were monopolized by the Eleans.Previous to each festival, officers, deputed by the Eleans, proclaimeda sacred truce. Whatever hostilities were existent in Greece,terminated for the time; sufficient interval was allowed to attend andto return from the games. [109]

During this period the sacred territory of Elis was regarded as underthe protection of the gods--none might traverse it armed. The Eleansarrogated indeed the right of a constant sanctity to perpetual peace;and the right, though sometimes invaded, seems generally to have beenconceded. The people of this territory became, as it were, theguardians of a sanctuary; they interfered little in the turbulentcommotions of the rest of Greece; they did not fortify their capital;and, the wealthiest people of the Peloponnesus, they enjoyed theiropulence in tranquillity;--their holy character contenting theirambition. And a wonderful thing it was in the midst of those warlike,stirring, restless tribes--that solitary land, with its plane grovebordering the Alpheus, adorned with innumerable and hallowed monumentsand statues--unvisited by foreign wars and civil commotion--a wholestate one temple!

At first only the foot-race was exhibited; afterward were addedwrestling, leaping, quoiting, darting, boxing, a more complicatedspecies of foot-race (the Diaulus and Dolichus), and the chariot andhorse-races. The Pentathlon was a contest of five gymnastic exercisescombined. The chariot-races [110] preceded those of the ridinghorses, as in Grecian war the use of chariots preceded the morescientific employment of cavalry, and were the most attractive andsplendid part of the exhibition. Sometimes there were no less thanforty chariots on the ground. The rarity of horses, and the expenseof their training, confined, without any law to that effect, thechariot-race to the highborn and the wealthy. It was consistent withthe vain Alcibiades to decline the gymnastic contests in which hisphysical endowments might have ensured him success, because hiscompetitors were not the equals to the long-descended heir of theAlcmaeonidae. In the equestrian contests his success wasunprecedented. He brought seven chariots into the field, and bore offat the same time the first, second, and fourth prize [111]. Althoughwomen [112], with the exception of the priestesses of the neighbouringfane of Ceres, were not permitted to witness the engagements, theywere yet allowed to contend by proxy in the chariot-races; and theladies of Macedon especially availed themselves of the privilege. Nosanguinary contest with weapons, no gratuitous ferocities, no strugglebetween man and beast (the graceless butcheries of Rome), polluted thefestival dedicated to the Olympian god. Even boxing with the cestuswas less esteemed than the other athletic exercises, and was excludedfrom the games exhibited by Alexander in his Asiatic invasions [113].Neither did any of those haughty assumptions of lineage or knightlyblood, which characterize the feudal tournament, distinguish betweenGreek and Greek. The equestrian contests were indeed, from theirexpense, limited to the opulent, but the others were impartially freeto the poor as to the rich, the peasant as the noble,--the Greeksforbade monopoly in glory. But although thus open to all Greeks, thestadium was impenetrably closed to barbarians. Taken from his plough,the boor obtained the garland for which the monarchs of the East wereheld unworthy to contend, and to which the kings of the neighbouringMacedon were forbidden to aspire till their Hellenic descent had beenclearly proved [114]. Thus periodically were the several statesreminded of their common race, and thus the national name andcharacter were solemnly preserved: yet, like the Amphictyonic league,while the Olympic festival served to maintain the great distinctionbetween foreigners and Greeks, it had but little influence inpreventing the hostile contests of Greeks themselves. The veryemulation between the several states stimulated their jealousy of eachother: and still, if the Greeks found their countrymen in Greeks theyfound also in Greeks their rivals.

We can scarcely conceive the vast importance attached to victory inthese games [115]; it not only immortalized the winner, it shed gloryupon his tribe. It is curious to see the different honourscharacteristically assigned to the conqueror in different states. IfAthenian, he was entitled to a place by the magistrates in thePrytaneum; if a Spartan, to a prominent station in the field. Toconquer at Elis was renown for life, "no less illustrious to a Greekthan consulship to a Roman!" [116] The haughtiest nobles, thewealthiest princes, the most successful generals, contended for theprize [117]. And the prize (after the seventh Olympiad) was a wreathof the wild olive!

Numerous other and similar games were established throughout Greece.Of these, next to the Olympic, the most celebrated, and the onlynational ones, were the Pythian at Delphi, the Nemean in Argolis, theIsthmian in Corinth; yet elsewhere the prize was of value; at all thenational ones it was but a garland--a type of the eternal truth, thatpraise is the only guerdon of renown. The olive-crown was nothing!--the shouts of assembled Greece--the showers of herbs and flowers--thebanquet set apart for the victor--the odes of imperishable poets--thepublic register which transmitted to posterity his name--the privilegeof a statue in the Altis--the return home through a breach in thewalls (denoting by a noble metaphor, "that a city which boasts suchmen has slight need of walls" [118]), the first seat in all publicspectacles; the fame, in short, extended to his native city--bequeathed to his children--confirmed by the universal voice whereverthe Greek civilization spread; this was the true olive-crown to theOlympic conqueror!

No other clime can furnish a likeness to these festivals: born of asavage time, they retained the vigorous character of an age of heroes,but they took every adjunct from the arts and the graces ofcivilization. To the sacred ground flocked all the power, and therank, and the wealth, and the intellect, of Greece. To that gorgeousspectacle came men inspired by a nobler ambition than that of thearena. Here the poet and the musician could summon an audience totheir art. If to them it was not a field for emulation [119], it wasat least a theatre of display.

XIX. The uses of these games were threefold;--1st, The uniting allGreeks by one sentiment of national pride, and the memory of a commonrace; 2dly, The inculcation of hardy discipline--of physical educationthroughout every state, by teaching that the body had its honours aswell as the intellect--a theory conducive to health in peace--and inthose ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength andskill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, 3dly, andprincipally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, asa motive, as an irresistible incentive--the desire of glory! Thatdesire spread through all classes--it animated all tribes--it taughtthat true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions.The ambition of the Altis established fame as a common principle ofaction. What chivalry did for the few, the Olympic contests effectedfor the many--they made a knighthood of a people.

If, warmed for a moment from the gravity of the historic muse, wemight conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke theimagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with theprofusest triumphs of Grecian art--all Greece assembled from hercontinent, her colonies, her isles--war suspended--a Sabbath ofsolemnity and rejoicing--the Spartan no longer grave, the Athenianforgetful of the forum--the highborn Thessalian, the gay Corinthian--the lively gestures of the Asiatic Ionian;--suffering the variousevents of various times to confound themselves in one recollection ofthe past, he may see every eye turned from the combatants to onemajestic figure--hear every lip murmuring a single name [120]--glorious in greater fields: Olympia itself is forgotten. Who is thespectacle of the day? Themistocles, the conqueror of Salamis, and thesaviour of Greece! Again--the huzzas of countless thousands followingthe chariot-wheels of the competitors--whose name is shouted forth,the victor without a rival!--it is Alcibiades, the destroyer ofAthens! Turn to the temple of the Olympian god, pass the brazengates, proceed through the columned aisles [121], what arrests the aweand wonder of the crowd! Seated on a throne of ebon and of ivory, ofgold and gems--the olive-crown on his head, in his right hand thestatue of Victory, in his left; wrought of all metals, the cloud-compelling sceptre, behold the colossal masterpiece of Phidias, theHomeric dream imbodied [122]--the majesty of the Olympian Jove! Enterthe banquet-room of the conquerors--to whose verse, hymned in a solemnand mighty chorus, bends the listening Spartan--it is the verse of theDorian Pindar! In that motley and glittering space (the fair ofOlympia, the mart of every commerce, the focus of all intellect), jointhe throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnttraveller;--now drinking in the wild account of Babylonian gardens, orof temples whose awful deity no lip may name--now, with clinched handsand glowing cheeks, tracking the march of Xerxes along exhaustedrivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea--what moves, what hushesthat mighty audience? It is Herodotus reading his history! [123]

Let us resume our survey.

XX. Midland, in the Peloponnesus, lies the pastoral Arcady. Besidesthe rivers of Alpheus and Erymanthus, it is watered by the gloomystream of Styx; and its western part, intersected by innumerablebrooks, is the land of Pan. Its inhabitants were long devoted to thepursuits of the herdsman and the shepherd, and its ancient governmentwas apparently monarchical. The Dorian irruption spared this land ofpoetical tradition, which the oracle of Delphi took under nounsuitable protection, and it remained the eldest and most unviolatedsanctuary of the old Pelasgic name. But not very long after thereturn of the Heraclidae, we find the last king stoned by hissubjects, and democratic institutions established. It was thenparcelled out into small states, of which Tegea and Mantinea were thechief.

XXI. Messenia, a fertile and level district, which lies to the westof Sparta, underwent many struggles with the latter power; and thispart of its history, which is full of interest, the reader will findbriefly narrated in that of the Spartans, by whom it was finallysubdued. Being then incorporated with that country, we cannot, at theperiod of history we are about to enter, consider Messenia as aseparate and independent state. [124]

And now, completing the survey of the Peloponnesus, we rest atLaconia, the country of the Spartans.

CHAPTER VI.

Return of the Heraclidae.--The Spartan Constitution and Habits.--Thefirst and second Messenian War.

I. We have already seen, that while the Dorians remained in Thessaly,the Achaeans possessed the greater part of the Peloponnesus. But,under the title of the Return of the Heraclidae (or the descendants ofHercules), an important and lasting revolution established the Doriansin the kingdoms of Agamemnon and Menelaus. The true nature of thisrevolution has only been rendered more obscure by modern ingenuity,which has abandoned the popular accounts for suppositions still moreimprobable and romantic. The popular accounts run thus:--Persecutedby Eurystheus, king of Argos, the sons of Hercules, with their friendsand followers, are compelled to take refuge in Attica. Assisted bythe Athenians, they defeat and slay Eurystheus, and regain thePeloponnesus. A pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger fromoffended heaven, drives them again into Attica. An oracle declaresthat they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage atsea. Wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make forthe Corinthian Isthmus. At the entrance of the Peloponnesus they aremet by the assembled arms of the Achaeans, Ionians, and Arcadians.Hyllus, the eldest son of Hercules, proposes the issue of a singlecombat. Echemus, king of Tegea, is selected by the Peloponnesians.He meets and slays Hyllus, and the Heraclidae engage not to renew theinvasion for one hundred years. Nevertheless, Cleodaeus, the son, andAristomachus, the grandson, of Hyllus, successively attempt to renewthe enterprise, and in vain. The three sons of Aristomachus(Aristodemus, Temenus, and Cresphontes), receive from Apollo himselfthe rightful interpretation of the oracle. It was by the Straits ofRhium, across a channel which rendered the distance between theopposing shores only five stadia, that they were ordained to pass; andby the Return of the third fruit, the third generation was denoted.The time had now arrived:--with the assistance of the Dorians, theAetolians, and the Locrians, the descendants of Hercules crossed thestrait, and established their settlement in Peloponnesus (B. C. 1048).

II. Whether in the previous expeditions the Dorians had assisted theHeraclidae, is a matter of dispute--it is not a matter of importance.Whether these Heraclidae were really descendants of the Achaeanprince, and the rightful heritors of a Peloponnesian throne, is apoint equally contested and equally frivolous. It is probable enoughthat the bold and warlike tribe of Thessaly might have been easilyallured, by the pretext of reinstating the true royal line, into anenterprise which might plant them in safer and more wide domains, andthat while the prince got the throne, the confederates obtained thecountry [125]. All of consequence to establish is, that the Doriansshared in the expedition, which was successful--that by time andvalour they obtained nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus--that theytransplanted the Doric character and institutions to their newpossessions, and that the Return of the Heraclidae is, in fact, thepopular name for the conquest of the Dorians. Whatever distinctionexisted between the Achaean Heraclidae and the Doric race, hadprobably been much effaced during the long absence of the former amongforeign tribes, and after their establishment in the Peloponnesus itsoon became entirely lost. But still the legend that assigned theblood of Hercules to the royalty of Sparta received early and implicitcredence, and Cleomenes, king of that state, some centuries afterward,declared himself not Doric, but Achaean.

Of the time employed in consummating the conquest of the invaders weare unable to determine--but, by degrees, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, andMessene, became possessed by the Dorians; the Aetolian confederatesobtained Elis. Some of the Achaeans expelled the Ionians from theterritory they held in the Peloponnesus, and gave to it the name itafterward retained, of Achaia. The expelled Ionians took refuge withthe Athenians, their kindred race.

The fated house of Pelops swept away by this irruption, Sparta fell tothe lot of Procles and Eurysthenes [126], sons of Aristodemus, fifthin descent from Hercules; between these princes the royal power wasdivided, so that the constitution always acknowledged two kings--onefrom each of the Heracleid families. The elder house was called theAgids, or descendants of Agis, son of Eurysthenes; the latter, theEurypontids, from Eurypon, descendant of Procles. Although Sparta,under the new dynasty, appears to have soon arrogated the pre-eminenceover the other states of the Peloponnesus, it was long before sheachieved the conquest even of the cities in her immediateneighbourhood. The Achaeans retained the possession of Amyclae, builtupon a steep rock, and less than three miles from Sparta, for morethan two centuries and a half after the first invasion of the Dorians.And here the Achaeans guarded the venerable tombs of Cassandra andAgamemnon.

III. The consequences of the Dorian invasion, if slowly developed,were great and lasting. That revolution not only changed thecharacter of the Peloponnesus--it not only called into existence theiron race of Sparta--but the migrations which it caused made theorigin of the Grecian colonies in Asia Minor. It developed also thoseseeds of latent republicanism which belonged to the Dorianaristocracies, and which finally supplanted the monarchicalgovernment--through nearly the whole of civilized Greece. Therevolution once peacefully consummated, migrations no longer disturbedto any extent the continent of Greece, and the various tribes becamesettled in their historic homes.

IV. The history of Sparta, till the time of Lycurgus, is that of astate maintaining itself with difficulty amid surrounding and hostileneighbours; the power of the chiefs diminished the authority of thekings; and while all without was danger, all within was turbulence.Still the very evils to which the Spartans were subjected--theirpaucity of numbers--their dissensions with their neighbours--theirpent up and encompassed situation in their mountainous confines--eventhe preponderating power of the warlike chiefs, among whom the unequaldivisions of property produced constant feuds--served to keep alivethe elements of the great Doric character; and left it the task of thefirst legislative genius rather to restore and to harmonize, than toinvent and create.

As I am writing the history, not of Greece, but of Athens, I do notconsider it necessary that I should detail the legendary life ofLycurgus. Modern writers have doubted his existence, but withoutsufficient reason:--such assaults on our belief are but the amusementsof skepticism. All the popular accounts of Lycurgus agree in this--that he was the uncle of the king (Charilaus, an infant), and held therank of protector--that unable successfully to confront a powerfulfaction raised against him, he left Sparta and travelled into Crete,where all the ancient Doric laws and manners were yet preserved,vigorous and unadulterated. There studying the institutions of Minos,he beheld the model for those of Sparta. Thence he is said to havepassed into Asia Minor, and to have been the first who collected andtransported to Greece the poems of Homer [127], hitherto onlypartially known in that country. According to some writers, hetravelled also into Egypt; and could we credit one authority, whichdoes not satisfy even the credulous Plutarch, he penetrated into Spainand Libya, and held converse with the Gymnosophists of India.

Returned to Sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state indisorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no lawswere written. The division of the regal authority between two kingsmust have produced jealousy--and jealousy, faction. And the power sodivided weakened the monarchic energy without adding to the libertiesof the people. A turbulent nobility--rude, haughty mountain chiefs--made the only part of the community that could benefit by the weaknessof the crown, and feuds among themselves prevented their power frombecoming the regular and organized authority of a government [128].Such disorders induced prince and people to desire a reform; theinterference of Lycurgus was solicited; his rank and his travels gavehim importance; and he had the wisdom to increase it by obtaining fromDelphi (the object of the implicit reverence of the Dorians) an oraclein his favour.

Thus called upon and thus encouraged, Lycurgus commenced his task. Ienter not into the discussion whether he framed an entirely newconstitution, or whether he restored the spirit of one common to hisrace and not unfamiliar to Sparta. Common sense seems to mesufficient to assure us of the latter. Let those who please believethat one man, without the intervention of arms--not as a conqueror,but a friend--could succeed in establishing a constitution, restingnot upon laws, but manners--not upon force, but usage--utterly hostileto all the tastes, desires, and affections of human nature: mouldingevery the minutest detail of social life into one system--that systemoffering no temptation to sense, to ambition, to the desire ofpleasure, or the love of gain, or the propensity to ease--but painful,hard, steril, and unjoyous;--let those who please believe that asystem so created could at once be received, be popularly embraced,and last uninterrupted, unbroken, and without exciting even the desireof change for four hundred years, without having had any previousfoundation in the habits of a people--without being previously rootedby time, custom, superstition, and character into their breasts. Formy part, I know that all history furnishes no other such example; andI believe that no man was ever so miraculously endowed with the powerto conquer nature. [129]

But we have not the smallest reason, the slightest excuse, for sopliant a credulity. We look to Crete, in which, previous to Lycurgus,the Dorians had established their laws and customs, and we see at oncethe resemblance to the leading features of the institutions ofLycurgus; we come with Aristotle to the natural conclusion, that whatwas familiar to the Dorian Crete was not unknown to the Dorian Sparta,and that Lycurgus did not innovate, but restore and develop, the lawsand the manners which, under domestic dissensions, might haveundergone a temporary and superficial change, but which were deeplyimplanted in the national character and the Doric habits. That theregulations of Lycurgus were not regarded as peculiar to Sparta, butas the most perfect development of the Dorian constitution, we learnfrom Pindar [130], when he tells us that "the descendants of Pamphylusand of the Heraclidae wish always to retain the Doric institutions ofAegimius." Thus regarded, the legislation of Lycurgus loses itsmiraculous and improbable character, while we still acknowledgeLycurgus himself as a great and profound statesman, adopting the onlytheory by which reform can be permanently wrought, and suiting thespirit of his laws to the spirit of the people they were to govern.When we know that his laws were not written, that he preferredengraving them only on the hearts of his countrymen, we know at oncethat he must have legislated in strict conformity to their earlyprepossessions and favourite notions. That the laws were unwrittenwould alone be a proof how little he introduced of what was alien andunknown.

V. I proceed to give a brief, but I trust a sufficient outline, ofthe Spartan constitution, social and political, without entering intoprolix and frivolous discussions as to what was effected or restoredby Lycurgus--what by a later policy.

There was at Sparta a public assembly of the people (called alia), ascommon to other Doric states, which usually met every full moon--upongreat occasions more often. The decision of peace and war--the finalratification of all treaties with foreign powers--the appointment tothe office of counsellor, and other important dignities--theimposition of new laws--a disputed succession to the throne,--wereamong those matters which required the assent of the people. Thusthere was the show and semblance of a democracy, but we shall findthat the intention and origin of the constitution were far fromdemocratic. "If the people should opine perversely, the elders andthe princes shall dissent." Such was an addition to the Rhetra ofLycurgus. The popular assembly ratified laws, but it could proposenone--it could not even alter or amend the decrees that were laidbefore it. It appears that only the princes, the magistrates, andforeign ambassadors had the privilege to address it.

The main business of the state was prepared by the Gerusia, or councilof elders, a senate consisting of thirty members, inclusive of the twokings, who had each but a simple vote in the assembly. This councilwas in its outline like the assemblies common to every Dorian state.Each senator was required to have reached the age of sixty; he waschosen by the popular assembly, not by vote, but by acclamation. Themode of election was curious. The candidates presented themselvessuccessively before the assembly, while certain judges were enclosedin an adjacent room where they could hear the clamour of the peoplewithout seeing the person, of the candidate. On him whom theyadjudged to have been most applauded the election fell. A mode ofelection open to every species of fraud, and justly condemned byAristotle as frivolous and puerile [131]. Once elected, the senatorretained his dignity for life: he was even removed from allresponsibility to the people. That Mueller should consider this anadmirable institution, "a splendid monument of early Grecian customs,"seems to me not a little extraordinary. I can conceive no electivecouncil less practically good than one to which election is for life,and in which power is irresponsible. That the institution was felt tobe faulty is apparent, not because it was abolished, but because itsmore important functions became gradually invaded and superseded by athird legislative power, of which I shall speak presently.

The original duties of the Gerusia were to prepare the decrees andbusiness to be submitted to the people; they had the power ofinflicting death or degradation without written laws, they interpretedcustom, and were intended to preserve and transmit it. The power ofthe kings may be divided into two heads--power at home--power abroad:power as a prince--power as a general. In the first it was limitedand inconsiderable. Although the kings presided over a separatetribunal, the cases brought before their court related only to repairsof roads, to the superintendence of the intercourse with other states,and to questions of inheritance and adoption.

When present at the council they officiated as presidents, but withoutany power of dictation; and, if absent, their place seems easily tohave been supplied. They united the priestly with the regalcharacter; and to the descendants of a demigod a certain sanctity wasattached, visible in the ceremonies both at demise and at theaccession to the throne, which appeared to Herodotus to savour ratherof Oriental than Hellenic origin. But the respect which the Spartanmonarch received neither endowed him with luxury nor exempted him fromcontrol. He was undistinguished by his garb--his mode of life, fromthe rest of the citizens. He was subjected to other authorities,could be reprimanded, fined, suspended, exiled, put to death. If hewent as ambassador to foreign states, spies were not unfrequently sentwith him, and colleagues the most avowedly hostile to his personassociated in the mission. Thus curbed and thus confined was hisauthority at home, and his prerogative as a king. But by law he wasthe leader of the Spartan armies. He assumed the command--he crossedthe boundaries, and the limited magistrate became at once an imperialdespot! [132] No man could question--no law circumscribed his power.He raised armies, collected money in foreign states, and condemned todeath without even the formality of a trial. Nothing, in short,curbed his authority, save his responsibility on return. He might bea tyrant as a general; but he was to account for the tyranny when herelapsed into a king. But this distinction was one of the wisest